


don't think twice, it's alright

by Reachingplacebo



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Slow Burn, Sniper-centric, sniper is really repressed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:28:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29841540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reachingplacebo/pseuds/Reachingplacebo
Summary: After fourteen years of active service, Sniper is at last discharged from the army. He waits for Scout at his family’s farm in Australia and reminisces.or the story of how a red sniper decided not to kill a blu scout when he had the chance and how they became something more than friends.
Relationships: Scout/Sniper (Team Fortress 2)
Kudos: 14





	1. Homecoming / Prologue

_“I was afraid to say -- I want to be with you -- see, here I’m shying, because I really want to say, I love you. ”_

John Tasker in a letter to Colin Spencer (1957)

Sniper comes home again on a Saturday afternoon. His parent’s rundown farmhouse is surrounded by the fields of oats they never harvested, burned yellow in the sun, dried out and almost dead.

He drives up the long dirt path in his van and parks it next to the empty sheepcote. He barely recognises it anymore, the colour on the walls is beginning to peel and the front porch is shabby and dirty. It’s the skeletal structure of his nostalgic dreams, starved to the bone. Sniper pulls his suitcase from the passenger seat and it nearly comes undone where it has been taped together in the corners. He balances it against his hip and reaches for the white box containing a pair of brand new Italian shoes shoved in beneath the dashboard. The sun burns against his bare forearms and sweat is already beading on his forehead. He kicks the door shut.

Sniper looks at the blue sky and thinks of baseball bats, lukewarm beer and slightly bucked teeth.

Only a year to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is just to set the mood... story kicks off in the next chapter.


	2. A Small Recollection of First Meetings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is set somewhere in the middle of the 1960s, leaning towards the early, as sniper is in the war, meanwhile the previous chapter is toward the end of the 1960s as he's come home. Chapters are gonna jump between these times n hopefully it doesn't get too confusing.
> 
> and also, respawn isn't a thing.

War turned boys into men. At least the American propaganda that crackled through his hand-built radio at night claimed so in a nasal voice. Sniper adjusted his rifle’s position on the stance and followed the jagged movement of a running soldier with practised precision. He supposed the statement was true, drawing the conclusion based on the better part of almost six years behind a gun. War turned boys into men and men into corpses. The soldier’s body dropped as if it had never moved at all.

He heard Demoman rejoice when the sun burned red, threading on the sedimentary rocks lining the horizon, and the only traces left of the other team were their bloated bodies and stained weapons in the sand.

“How about that, ye fucken’ fannies!”

He bounced in rhythm to a melody only he could hear, cheering himself on. The Soldier and Scout joined in and from the little run-down room on the second floor Sniper watched the three of them form an uneven conga-line and laughed at the bodies in the dust. War turned men apathetic if not dead.

He pulled out a squashed package of cigarettes from his breast pocket and tapped the bottom of it against his knee a few times before picking out one still in decent shape. The smoke burned in the cracks on his chapped lips so he licked his mouth with a dry tongue between every drag.

The badlands felt more like a desert than anything, despite the grass and bushes, and reminded him too much of home in the way the excessive heat made his cheek piece burn his skin in the afternoons. The sun always seemed to be in his eyes too, even with his hat and sunglasses on. Every time he pulled back to check behind himself, blue silhouettes in rounded shapes danced hand in hand in the doorway.

Movement in the corner of his eye took his attention away from his team’s celebration and he quickly recognized the man in an unfamiliar uniform as a BLU Scout. Sniper rolled the cigarette into the corner of his lips and framed the man’s head with his crosshairs, the cheekpiece was slightly colder in the evening’s purple light. With a feeling he couldn’t properly describe, he realized that it wasn’t a man cowered behind a building with a shotgun in a pair of trembling hands, but a boy. Not symbolically or metaphorically in the way the nasal American announcer used the word. The BLU Scout didn’t look older than twenty-one. He had freckles on his cheeks and buck teeth and despite the persistent sun, his face appeared pale in the shadow, sweaty and almost hollow. Sniper felt his heart thump like an anomaly in his head.

He steadied his cramping hands despite it and convinced himself that this was just one among thousands. He’d turn the boy into a man, a dead one.

Before Sniper could apply enough pressure to trigger the shot the boy turned his head and stared right at him as if he had felt Sniper’s eyes on him. Sniper’s entire body froze and suddenly he didn’t feel the cigarette smoke burn against his chapped lips. Time seemed to trip over itself and for a second they shared a moment where everything that wasn’t them ceased to continue. In his imagination, he heard the boy’s breath shudder along the dry ground and between yellow blades of grass and dirt. Without breaking eye-contact Sniper let his scope wander to the side.

The moment shattered when the warning shot burrowed into the wall beside the boy. He scurried away in the other direction.

Demoman, Soldier, and everyone else stilled in their places at the familiar sound, expecting the worst.

“What was that?” Soldier screamed at him and it was loud enough to cause a flock of birds to rise from a rooftop.

“Only a bird ‘s all, mate” Sniper responded lamely through the com.

Soldier laughed and that was that.

“I should thank you for yesterday.”

“Bloody hell!”

Sniper pulled out his kukri with practised familiarity and pointed the sharpened edge toward the BLU Scout standing in the doorway among blue silhouettes. He looked different in the sun, not so hollow anymore and a pair of dog tags scraped against the tan line on his collarbone.

“Woah, buddy, I’m bein’ nice here” BLU Scout raised his hands to shows his empty palms. Sniper carefully made sure the bat and shotgun were crossed over the boy’s back but kept his knife still. “I wanted to thank you for not shootin’ me bac- Hold up, are you from like Australian?”

“Yea’, first time meeting a real one?” Sniper asked and inched closer, moving the knife in a small arch as he did, “Let me tell you something about Aussies, _mate_ , we never leave a job unfinished.”

“Do ya have an ammo limit each day or what? Why not just shoot at me twice?” Scout interrupted before Sniper could even pretend to attack him.

“You’re too quick, waste of ammo to try,” Sniper said dismissively, almost offended at the implication that he was too dumb to think of shooting twice. He shifted his sweaty grip around the kukri.

“The scout on your team could’a killed me, not that I suck or anythin’, but I’ve seen that dude and man, he is freakin’ fast!” Scout commented, “But nobody came after me. Either they ignored you, which I don’t think considerin’ ya rank” — Scout eyed the patch on Sniper’s shoulder and looked up again — “or you let me get away.”

Sniper felt his jaw tighten at the smugness in Scout’s expression and for a second he considered following up on what he had said.

“Piss off, I won’t be so nice next time” he warned instead.

“I only needed that one time, I’m takin’ your whole team down, _pal_ ” Scout winked at him before he disappeared and Sniper felt his cheeks turn an unflattering red, more from surprise than anything.

He pocketed his kukri, straightened the brim of his hat, and positioned himself behind his rifle again.

What a mongrel, he thought and shot a passing Medic in the head.

In the evening when Sniper withdrew back to base he found the corpse of an enemy spy sprawled out in the jagged shadows on the stairs outside. It seemed like his head had been caved in by a bat; raw strength compensating for the lack of experience and technique behind the hit.

Sniper didn’t want to think about who did it.

Sniper watched the RED Heavy’s body collide with the ground, his skull shattering in a thousand pieces and guilt swelled like an infected blister in the bottom of Sniper’s stomach.

It was an accident, he argued with himself as he lowered his rifle and reloaded it. It wasn’t his fault that the Heavy had stepped in front of his travelling bullet and caught it with the side of the cranium. He had aimed for the BLU Scout; the BLU Scout who had been cornered by said RED Heavy, crossing his scrawny chest with bandaged hands and inaudibly prayed to a god for a merciful death. Sniper saw him wave through the scope.

Sniper pretended not to see him, directed his attention to a tall pyro standing in the shadows. It felt like ants were crawling up and down his hands. The pyro turned his head, ignorant to the crosshairs he was framed in.

“Good boy, hold it just like that” Sniper whispered.

This was going to--

“Yo!” The comm in his breast pocket crackled loudly.

The pyro’s head glided out of the crosshairs as Sniper accidentally fired and the bullet barely grazed the target. Sniper groaned but captured him in his crosshairs again. He didn’t have the patience nor the courage to go against a lunatic with a flamethrower in close-quarter combat. The bullet pierced through one of the man’s glass lenses.

Sniper pushed away from the scope, “How did you connect to this frequency?”

“Well, I think ya know…”

Sniper could imagine Scout’s smug face in front of him.

“No, I don’t.”

“I’m more than my enormous muscles a--“

“You killed someone and took their radio” Sniper rapidly tapped his fingers against the windowsill in growing agitation.

“You make it sound so not wicked.”

“Because it’s not, it’s idiotic.”

“Whatever, you’re just mad you didn’t think of it first.”

Sniper, for all his anger, snorted and found he couldn’t quite strangle the smile even if he wanted to. He leaned against a wall.

“Sure. You’re lucky I made the shot, otherwise, I would’ve come down and bloody killed you.”

“You’re smilin’ right now. I hear it in your voice. Wouldn’t kill a man who made you smile.”

“Piss off, it’s just because I’m knackered.”

“What the hell is knackered?” Scout asked and Sniper could hear him trying not to laugh.

“It means I’m tired, you mongrel,”

“Tired? Knaecke’ed… Kn-ah-ckered,” Scout imitated his accent. Badly.

Sniper tilted his head back and sighed.

“No, listen, mate, it’s knackered” He explained.

“Knacke’ed” Scout tried.

“Are you even trying to pronounce it right?” Sniper complained without bite and couldn’t help but dissolve into a fit of laughter at the offended inhale on the other side of the radio.

“How dare you? You can’t go around makin’ up pretend words and then make fun of a man when can’t say them correctly. I came here to thank you—“

Scout’s voice disappeared in what sounded like bullet fire and the loud ring that followed nearly rendered Sniper deaf. Then there was nothing. The comm crackled into radio silence and Sniper couldn’t say why his heart began to beat so fast. His fingers slipped over the comm’s buttons as he mustered the courage to speak. It was almost enough to convince him to pray for the first time in twenty years.

“Mate, you there?”

The sound of gravel and someone readjusting the radio on the other side calmed him down somewhat.

“Sniper?”

He recognized with a sinking feeling the southern twang in Engineer’s voice.

“G’day Engineer, what happened?” Sniper asked and willed his voice not to tremble.

“Had a problem with some BLU Scout on the teleporter, kept killin’ the people who popped up here. I sent a heavy to deal with it, but the kid must be workin’ with a sniper. Y’know what they say? If you want somethin’ done you gotta do it yourself, right quick too.”

“Did you kill him?” Sniper heard himself ask. He wiped a sweaty hand on his pant leg and saw that he had been digging red crescent moons into his palm with his nails.

A beat.

“Nah, he fled, unfortunately,” he finally said.

“That’s… too bad, I hope you get him.”

“You and me both, partner” Engineer agreed, a tense silence followed his words, “Listen, Sniper, don’t do this no more, ok?”

“Whot do you mean?”

“Y’know exactly what I mean.”

The comm clicked back into radio silence before Sniper could defend himself. He blinked slowly as if waking up from a long slumber and with the way it felt like his stomach was pressing into his throat he thought he might vomit. He slammed his head into the closest wall.

The BLU team was having a good day, Sniper would grant them that.

He had been chased from his position by a spy and a demoman that he barely had managed to kill with his kukri, some rope, and screams of bloody murder. Now, as he scrambled to keep everything that made him human from spilling out of a hole in his side with only his hands behind a worn-down building, he waits for death or a miracle. The battle continues behind him. His knees buckle beneath him and his back hits the wall. Bloody spies and bloody medics who don’t do their jobs.

“Ouch, man, that looks bad.”

Sniper struggled to pull out his handgun and aim it at the blur of blue clothes appearing around the corner. He barely had the strength to keep his arm straight.

“Oh-- It’s you” Relief washed over him like rain and he felt almost tempted to pocket his gun. He focused his eyes, tried to make clear lines of the freckles on Scout’s oval face. Scout looked similar to the blue silhouettes that distorted his sight, mostly in the way that Sniper couldn’t decide if he was entirely real or not.

“Yeah, you’re welcome. It’s ya lucky day,” Scout responded.

Sniper would laugh at that if he hadn’t been stabbed in the jaw, “It would be my lucky day if you were a medic.”

Scout took a closer look at him, at the bleeding wound hidden under a broad hand.

“Maybe I can help ya,” Scout suggested slowly, “But you gotta put the gun down first.”

Sniper barely had the strength to trigger the shot. It was a lose-lose situation so he decided to take his chances and tossed the gun at Scout’s feet.

Scout kicked the gun to the side and Sniper watched with eye heavy from blood loss as he approached cautiously, the wrinkles in his shirt, the freckles on his arms, and the dry dirt caught on the tips of his brown eyelashes. He thought of what Engineer said. Engineer was right, of course --he rarely wasn’t-- but there was something easy about letting ethics and morals dissolve against the surprising kindness from his enemy. Reluctantly Sniper moved his hand to let Scout look at the bleeding gap between his ribs. Scout hissed quietly at the sight.

“It looks really bad” he sounded so serious, Sniper didn’t think it was him at first.

“Crikey, it probably is. I can feel the air humidity with my liver” He accidentally spat blood on Scout’s fingers, “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it” Scout pulled his hands back and Sniper found his body following the touch, “Wait here, I’ll get him.”

Sniper raised a brow, “Doc? Mine or yours? Because I think your medic would speed things up, in a not-good way.”

“Yours. I’ll get a RED Medic.”

“How can I trust you not to bring a BLU one?”

Scout pulled his shotgun into his hands, “Do you have any other options?”

Scout disappeared and the reality of the situation suddenly settled into Sniper with the strength of a fever. His dad had been right, he was a bloody idiot. A bloody idiot for trusting someone on the enemy team. He was too soft, always had been.

He dipped in and out of consciousness waiting for Scout despite it all and didn’t know if the circles in his eyes were the sun or something else. At one point he looked down on himself and saw not a bruised body with lanky limbs, but the black suit he used to wear to church when he was eight.

“Mundy,” His mum said strictly but kindly, straightening his small tie with young hands. “What did I say about playing outside on Sunday mornings?”

Outside the sky writhed in black and the horizon stopped just by the edge of their property.

“I don’t want Lucille to be lonely,” he answered and his voice didn’t match his body.

His mum didn’t seem to reflect on the fact that her prepubescent son spoke with the voice of a thirty-year-old man with a nasty smoking habit and a hole in his ribs. Her hands stained red as she brushed dirt from the front of his white shirt.

“Lucille, Lucille, Lucille, do you-”

“-have any prior experience?” Miss Pauling asked him. The military doctor that had been there when he was drifted stood beside her with his face hidden by a clipboard.

“I- What?” Sniper mumbled and squinted at the white light above him. He sat naked on a hospital bed and all his scars bled as though they were fresh, even the one by his left ear that he got as a result of falling down the stairs at the age of five. Water rushes past his feet and they seem to be stranded nowhere; his parent’s farmhouse on the horizon, burnt to ash. Sniper had no idea what any of it meant. If it even meant anything.

“Terrific. Why are you like this?” Miss Pauling continued and the doctor sniffled before scribbling something on the clipboard aggressively.

Sniper blinked and his view was flooded by the greenery of the badlands again, brought into consciousness by the sound of Scout nearly tripping as he rounded the corner, dog tags clinging to the sweat on his throat and bandages pouring out of his pockets. A familiar RED Medic ran after him. Sniper blinked slowly and then more rapidly.

“Oi! Doc!” He yelled with whatever strength he had left. His entire side was wet with blood and he could feel it drip down his knees.

Medic slowed into a halt by Sniper’s feet and let Scout pass unscathed around the corner.

“A bit of medicine would be bloody lovely,” He huffed.

“Herr Sniper, what happened to you?” Medic asked.

“Stabbed twice by a spy, managed to off the bloody wuss before he finished the job though.”

“That scout you saw stole my bandages, but I still have the old reliable as you say” Medic patted the medi-gun hanging at his side with a gloved hand.

He switched weapons and turned the medi-gun on in one elegant move. To be honest, Sniper had no clue how the thing worked. Medicine had never been anything that interested him beyond the necessary first-aid treatment. Then again, whatever the Medic was doing was never medicine as much as it was dubious, at best, biological experiments. Sniper was almost afraid to ask sometimes; it was one of those rare things where ignorance was the better option. Legal and actual medicine or not it still felt good to finally be able to breathe without hindrance, even if his clothes remained drenched in old blood.

“You’re lucky I found you here. I believe you vere merely a bucket of blood away from dying” Medic assessed and he switched the gun off to check Sniper’s healed side and jaw with his hand before. He wiped his hand on his stained white coat. “That should do it.”

Sniper tipped the brim of his hat, feeling dumbfounded and happy for more reasons than not having to worry about his liver spilling out of his stomach.

“Thanks, doc, figure it’s my lucky day today.”


	3. Records

Everything in the house has remained untouched. The coffee pot stands in the same way his mum left it and the dusty TV remote still sits on the right armrest of his dad’s worn armchair. It feels eerie, as if they never left and will suddenly burst through the door and ask Sniper to go up and clean his room like they had done an odd twenty years ago.

He takes his camper into the nearest city to buy some groceries and cleaning materials, it’s only half an hour away if he stays ten kilometres above the allowed speed. Unlike the house the city is nothing as he remembered it, bigger and broader than before and more than three buses. He stops somewhere along the street, caught by a familiar name in a shop’s window.

Tom Jones. Live on Air 1965. 

And on a red sticker in the upper left corner: $3.99.

Sniper is rather sure he has his old capri record player stashed away in his closet somewhere.

“You got really good taste,” the cashier, the name Smiths embroidered across his breast pocket, comments when Sniper places the album on the desk in front of him. “Some of his best songs are on here.”

“They’re the only songs of his I know,” Sniper says, pulling out his wallet.

The cashier looks surprised, “You’ve been missing out. Maybe you’d fancy listening to some of his newer stuff as well?”

“Thanks mate, but I’m satisfied with this.”

As soon as he’s home and the groceries have been put in its respective place he rushes up to his old room. The only clue to the fact that time has passed at all is that his bed is made, which it never was when he lived here, and two candle-holders in porcelain formed in the shape of clementines stand on the nightstand.

He swings open his closet doors and throws shoes he hasn’t used in ages aside. Crammed into a corner in the back he finds it, nearly unused and just a bit scratched from where a belt has dropped onto its lid.

Sniper carries the record player downstairs and places it next to a pair of dead plants in the TV-room before carefully extracting the record he bought from its paper case. The speakers crackle and a familiar piano riff fills the room and suddenly the sun shining through the windows feels a little brighter. 

Sniper cleans the entire house for the first time since his parents passed away. He polishes every single one of his mum’s old European porcelain figures that she kept in a glass shelf in the TV-room to Little by Little and lifts the record player outside, to the back porch so he can keep listening as he puts the old clothesline, strung between a thin stick burrowed in the dirt and a large oak, to use. There’s something comforting about Spanish Harlem playing to the image of white, newly rinsed sheets fluttering in the breeze.

Only six months left.


	4. The Month a Peom Bloomed in the Desert

The intel was misplaced, switched with a shitty forgery, and the teams reluctantly sank into an indefinite armistice of sorts. 

The response from Sniper’s team had been mixed. Soldier had slammed his fist against the table when Medic informed them, gathered around the kitchen table, and complained loudly about how back in the good old days armistice didn’t exist since it was a communist invention with the intention of weakening US forces. He didn’t listen when Engineer tried to explain that communism pre-dated the Korean Conflict. Scout had been negative to the change too, moaning about some new weapon he was working on and its capability of impressing older women in glasses.

“Miss Pauling wouldn’t choose you even if you were the last man standing on earth,” Spy said behind a cigarette, “which I doubt you will be in case that happens.”

Scout whipped his head around and Sniper watched the fight unfold a meter in front of him. It didn’t end until Demoman and Engineer forced them apart.

Sniper kept to himself, in the van most days, cleaning his rifle or practising with the bow he had forgotten he crammed beneath the sink eight years ago. He had dinner at base, perhaps played one or two rounds of poker with the rest of the team if he was in the mood for it before withdrawing to bed. It felt oddly mundane, like he hadn’t seen a man’s spine protrude out of a decapitated throat just a week ago.

By the third day, when Sniper walked back to his camper, looking at the stars, he suddenly came to the horrifying realization that he missed Scout. He was therefore, in some way, emotionally attached to the kid. Not in a weird way, he told himself and kicked a pebble out of his way, more in the way someone missed a good mate. He tried not to think about it, or what thinking of Scout as dawn rolled in through his window meant. Three nights in a row he dreamt of Scout.

Sniper woke up in the middle of the fourth night to the sound of somebody knocking on his door. Without moving too much he slid his hand beneath his pillow and curled his fingers around the handgun he kept there and quietly slipped out of bed. By the time his feet hit the floor any remainder of sleep had been blinked out of his eyes. Everything was quiet save the click when he turned the gun’s safety off. Sniper listened without breathing for abnormalities outside, nothing seemed to suggest that there were more than one or two people outside. 

“Who is it?” He asked and his voice grated against vocal chords still stiff with sleep.

“It’s Scout!” a familiar voice echoed on the other side, “Your lucky charm, remember? I'm the one that got ya the medic. Tall, handsome, big muscles. Ring a bell yet?” 

Sniper’s shoulder sagged as he relaxed and he lifted the gun to scratch the back of his head with the muzzle. 

“Alright, I’m coming” He pressed the gun safety back on with nimble fingers and lined it against his hip, tucked somewhat securely beneath the elastic band of his boxer’s

He struggled with the lock before swinging the door open, trying to look as if he had not previously struggled with the lock, “What the bloody hell are you doing here in the middle of the night?”

“I come bearin’ gifts” Scout announced with a toothy smile and lifted his bandaged hands to present four beer bottles dangling between his fingers. He caught the familiar outline on Sniper’s hip in the corner of his eye and winked. “Is that a gun in ya boxers or are you happy to see me?” 

“You can forget coming in if they’re American” Sniper informed him, but still leaned to the side so Scout could slip past him, ignoring the second remark.

“Yo, I thought livin’ in camper vans were for like… divorced men with porn addictions,” Scout commented as he peered around inside the van, “but this shit right here is downright cozy. Man, I could live like this.” 

Sniper closed and locked the door, “And I thought ankle-biters were supposed to wear diapers, but it seems we’re both wrong.” 

“I rather bite people’s ankles or whateva’ than spend my monthly income on teenager’s bikini magazines” Scout responded.

“Oi, that’s too far,” Sniper swatted him in the chest. It had felt like the most common thing to do, as if they had already had this friendly banter countless times before. Scout stilled against the contact and his face is caught somewhere between two expressions. Sniper’s smile dropped and he worried that he overstepped a line somewhere, an unspoken boundary, that he was being too soft, too comfortable around the runner. Scout swallowed thickly.

“Whateva, put on some clothes already. Nobody wants to see that,” Scout stuttered. He put the beer bottles on the small table attached to the wall.

“I think you’re jealous,” Sniper teased, trying to sound suave despite feeling like his entire body shook. He tossed the gun back into bed, facing away from Scout, and pulled on a pair of jeans he found on the floor that didn’t smell too bad. 

“Yeah sure, of what?” Scout continued. He forced the metal cap off one of the bottles with his teeth and handed it to Sniper.

“You’re going to ruin your teeth like that” Sniper warned him and took the offered beer, “Thanks. I’ll tell you now that I don’t fancy any brand of American beer. They’re all cat piss.”

“If you don’t like this you have no freakin’ taste” Scout opened another one with his teeth again.

Sniper took a cautious sip and considered the taste for a second before he swallowed, “This isn’t too bad.”

“Duh, because it’s the best beer” Scout dangled the bottle in front of Sniper as to make a statement before he took a sip too. He made a show of exhaling loudly as he lowered the bottle. 

“This bottle is an exception” Sniper reasoned and sat down, swallowing another sip.

Scout followed the movement and sat down opposite him, nervously eyeing Sniper as if the older man would scream at him to get the hell out of his camper. Sniper didn’t, of course.

“Why are you here?” he asked instead.

“You saved my life, I saved yours. I think that counts for something; makes us friends” Scout drowned the nervous laughter threatening to burst in beer.

“Alright, I reckon you’re right,” Sniper admitted and the small smile that spread on Scout’s face in response, almost hidden by the bottle’s top neck, caused something in Sniper’s chest to squeeze suddenly. He raised his bottle slightly, looked at Scout, and hoped his face didn’t reveal too much. “To friendship then.” 

Scout clinked his bottle against Sniper’s.

They drank and chatted about nothing in particular until dusk began to roll in through the window and the sky glowed red and Scout had to leave, his cap tilted slightly to the side.

By the fourth time Scout showed up at his doorstep with American beer in hand, it became an established routine which Sniper found himself looking forward to already by lunchtime each day. They met in Sniper’s van to drink and talk about their respective teams. Scout brought a deck of cards along sometimes and tried to teach Sniper games he had never heard of and half-suspected Scout was making up at the spot only to win. 

Conversation topics slowly transcended from the best type of melee weapon to childhood memories as the nights passed. Scout talked a lot about his ma and brothers. If Sniper remembered correctly there were seven of them, five of which have died; one stillborn, one in an accident, and three in war. It was revealed that Scout used to be an ankle-biter in the literal definition of the word, constantly biting his mum and brothers as a sign of affection until his oldest brother had had enough and struck him over the head with an eight grade math book. Sniper had only asked about his dad one time and Scout had laughed uncomfortably, begun to wring his hand like an unsure child on the verge of tears so Sniper changed the subject. 

Sniper found himself talking about his parents too. It was mostly about their farm though, the sheep they had and their border collie, Lucille. 

Mostly it was Scout talking, he would stop mid-sentence, having reminded himself of something else and pause the story about his brother’s belated birthday cake to mention the time he worked part time at a bakery. Sniper didn’t mind listening; listening to Scout talk and watching him from across the table allowed Sniper to notice small things about the kid that he’d never pay attention to otherwise. Small things like his crooked corner tooth that only was visible when he laughed with an open mouth, or the faded scar that ran across his collarbone and that Sniper could see when Scout leaned over the table to grab another beer. The knowledge felt intimate, wrong almost and he wondered if he was doing something vile when Scout slipped his foot against the inside of his ankle and he didn’t pull away. Scout always looked at him as if waiting for something and Sniper didn’t dare to do more than smile.


End file.
